A closer look at Microsoft’s new, multi-colored logo

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Microsoft, for the first time since 1987, has updated the company’s logo. Yes, the venerable, italicized logo with the weird “o” that was introduced in 1987 is dead, replaced by what you see above. It’s a shift that’s in keeping with general trend of Microsoft‘s branding over the past few years.

The new logo features two basic components: a symbol on the left and the product name on the right. This is how Microsoft has handled its popular sub-brands in the past, including Xbox and Office, so it doesn’t come as a major surprise even if it is rather devoid of character.

On the left is a four-color window in red, green, blue, and yellow. These are, of course, the primary colors plus yellow, which signify strength, simplicity, boldness, and other terms that sounds great in a branding meeting. They are also the colors found in Google’s logo, but Microsoft did go a bit wild with the blue. This shade is lighter than what you’d expect from a normal RGB palette and it’s a call out to both the Windows 8 logo and the particular blue favored by the design language formerly known as Metro. (Of course Google’s new favicon logo is non-primary blue as well but it uses a dustier, less vibrant shade)

As for that windows shape, it’s just four squares. So where the Microsoft name was once italicized and Windows 8 icon features what is essentially a heavily italicized window, the new Microsoft symbol has reversed course and gone with a head-on view of a window. This icon forms five squares — this would be great if the company had four product divisions, but sadly it has just three (Microsoft Platform Products and Services, Business, and Entertainment and Devices). This video shows the logo in action and explains three four colors…

As you can see in the middle of the video blue is for Windows, red is for Office, green is for Xbox, and yellow is there because a window can’t have three panes. The yellow box could be a conveniently placeholder for another product, but it’s doubtful that anything would become that prominent that quickly. The Windows/Office/Xbox select does, at least, line up with the three divisions listed above.

The company’s name is a non-stylized text treatment in a sans-serif font. The type is Segoe, which Microsoft owns — a nice way to save on licensing or commissioning a custom font — and has used before. Segoe was featured in certain Windows 8 UI elements and, while not particularly exciting, shows a respectable bit of dogfooding on Microsoft’s part.

The last notable element is the “ft” ligature. This serves as a callback to the previous logo, which also featured it, and is a move that will excite at least a few typography fans. Ligatures between a lower case “f” and “t” combination are common enough, but Microsoft should get points for retaining a bit of the character from their previous logo.